by Rona Jaffe
Bambi slid into the booth. “Bambi, this is Alyssa,” Matt said.
“Garfield?” she inquired sweetly.
“I’ve been talking about you,” he said to this blonde, and turned red.
“He said you told him he had a short attention span,” Bambi said pleasantly, but she was looking at Matt. She couldn’t believe she wasn’t more angry or upset with him; she just thought he was the biggest putz she had ever met. He had been afraid to face her and so he brought his reunited girlfriend in instead. What a completely convoluted jerk.
“He does,” Alyssa said.
“Bambi and I are buddies,” he said.
“Computer nerds,” Bambi said, and wrinkled her nose. Then she rose gracefully and moved on. His loss, she thought; dick for brains.
The next morning she got up and cut off her braid. It represented the past, and she was no longer a naive little thing. Her new very short haircut stood up in a kind of cute punk rock style, and made her brown eyes look enormous, her neck long and vulnerable. She turned her head from side to side, inspecting her appearance in the mirror, and decided it was a distinct improvement. She had no more respect for Matt, but she didn’t regret for a minute that she’d had the affair. Men were, by and large, idiots. It wasn’t that Simon was so sexy and appealing, or that Matt was; she had the capacity, that was what was important. She would always be sexual. Men were only a device.
She would make up a story, learn to use the computer, and write a script. And if he was guilty enough—and she would see that he was—Matt would read her script when she finished it, and tell her what to do then. It never occurred to her that he might tell her to throw it away.
20
1983—NEW YORK
The walls of The Dakota were very thick and very old. It was Laura’s fortress, one in which she now lived alone. Nina had her own apartment. Clay, well … Clay was still Clay, the reluctant visitor; the only difference was that he never pretended to be charming anymore. Nina had become a reluctant visitor too, pleading work; her father’s daughter after all. Laura was only fifty-two, but seemed ancient, ageless. Her health was deteriorating from years of starvation and substance abuse: naked she looked like a Shar-Pei. She covered her wrinkled body with lovely floating clothes, her pale gray face with makeup. And on this particular evening, the household help gone home, the doors locked and bolted, Laura was sewing pills into her shower curtain.
So no one could get at them and take them away from her.
More than ever the pills were all she had, but everyone who had loved her was against her now, trying to beg or frighten her into giving them up. Crazy Tanya Tattletale, even kind Edward; Nina Buttinski, who thought an appearance for dinner was a cue for a lecture and tears. No one could be trusted. The help—who knew if they had been bribed? Laura had two different doctors now, four different pharmacies, and a cache of security that nestled in the hem of her shower curtain and the pockets she had made along the sides. Of course no one used that shower, and the plastic liner was firmly attached, with an extra loose one within. No one would ever look in a shower curtain. She herself took tepid baths, as steam was bad for pills.
She had, of course, her trusty vial in the medicine cabinet above the sink, and a spare one in her handbag. The others were a backup. She felt as if she were always in a state of siege.
The weather was fresh again, early spring. In the park outside Laura’s window tiny green buds had appeared on the trees almost overnight, and people walked more slowly and lingered where before they had hidden from the cold. Strange people were there too, sometimes, dressed in layers of filthy rags, talking to themselves or to listeners who weren’t there. At night they slept on benches now, surrounded by tattered plastic bags filled with “treasures” they had found in the trash cans. Laura wondered who they had been before.
She wondered who she had been before. She had her scrap-books from the years when thousands of people had stood up and applauded her, the nights of the red roses, and when Nina came to dinner Laura brought them out and made her look.
“Do you see anyone you know?” Laura would ask.
Nina would look away.
“Do you think Susan Josephs is still your father’s mistress?”
“I have to go now.”
“Not yet. It’s early.”
“I have to read a manuscript for tomorrow morning.”
“They make you work too hard.”
“I like it.”
“I used to work hard when I was your age,” Laura would say. “I don’t even remember if I liked it. Did I like it?”
“Why should I come to dinner when you don’t eat?” Nina would burst out. “I can’t stand this charade! Look at you, you shake or you’re drugged, you forget things, you don’t talk sense! I’m afraid you’ll … There are wonderful private clinics. You could get detoxed, Mom, it’s not a shame. People do it all the time. Celebrities. Normal housewives. Everybody.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me like that in my own home!”
“I only do it because I love you.” And then Nina would cry—the littlest things made her cry; you never knew how to treat her. She was a walking wound. And Laura would either storm out of the room or stay and cry too, holding her child, depending on her mood. The only thing that frightened her at all was not knowing until it happened exactly how she would feel. Once she’d even thrown Nina out, and then was on the phone calling, calling, until Nina was home in her own apartment and answered the phone so Laura could beg to be forgiven. It was so strange that all those years when Nina was small she had avoided physical contact with her mother, and now that she was grown she allowed it. It should have been the other way around, shouldn’t it?
Laura did not like those meals with Nina and she wondered why she insisted that Nina come. She liked Tanya and Edward better, when Tanya wasn’t lecturing her about the pills. Yes, at long last, even Tanya had become a betrayer. More than ever now, Tanya felt her touch was magic, that she could cure anything; she brewed strange potions which, of course, Laura would not go near, and she spoke of the forbidden subject. But Laura also loved her. When Tanya wasn’t too full of herself she was funny and harmless. The two of them went back too many years to let these things spoil their friendship.
The phone rang as Laura finished her sewing. It was Tanya.
“I was just thinking about you,” Laura said.
“Of course,” Tanya said. Her voice was very bright. “You must come over tomorrow; I have the best surprise. I can’t tell you on the phone, but it’s as if, suddenly, I’ve found my life’s work. I am transmogrified. Come to dinner—come early. Come at five; Edward isn’t going to the office tomorrow.”
“Why isn’t he going to the office?”
“He hasn’t left my side since this happened.”
“In that case,” Laura said, “I’ll be there at four-thirty.”
Tanya and Edward lived in an art deco building that had gone co-op when things were cheap; their apartment was now worth over a million dollars. Outside was a uniformed doorman, inside was a marble lobby, and upstairs was clutter. Tanya had never been much of a housekeeper, and she never threw anything away. She opened the door glowing, and gave Laura a kiss.
She was wearing a black lace dress, and around her neck were the assorted crystals and amulets she always wore; her wrists were covered with ethnic bracelets, and her tinted aubergine hair floated around her head like a nimbus, held back by a narrow black beaded headache band from the Twenties that made her look like Zelda Fitzgerald. “Ah,” said Laura. “My elegant witch.”
“Come in, come in.” Tanya led Laura into the living room where Edward was standing, dressed in casual clothes, and by the window, in silhouette, was a young man.
“Hello Edward,” Laura said.
“Hi.” His voice was strained and he did not look happy.
“And this is Ricky,” Tanya announced, gesturing at the man in front of the window. “Ricky, this is my best friend Laura.”
&
nbsp; He took a few steps forward. He was, Laura noticed, scruffy and unkempt, and he was wearing Edward’s clothes. “Fucking dirty cunt whore,” he said.
Laura was so shocked she almost turned and ran. “Oh, don’t pay any attention,” Tanya said cheerfully. “Ricky can’t help it.” She smiled at him. “Let’s all have a drink. Edward, why don’t you make something fun—a martini! With lots of ice and lots of olives. And here’s cheese.” She gestured to the coffee table where she had laid out a spread of cheeses and crackers and nuts. Ricky let out another stream of obscenities. “Ricky, dear, come sit down, don’t be shy.”
Shy? Laura thought. Angry, insane, dangerous maybe, but I would never call this creature shy. “Where did you two meet?” she asked pleasantly.
“He followed me home,” Tanya said. “He was living on the street; it’s so sad, his family doesn’t want him. The minute I looked into his eyes, I knew I could help him. And he knew it too. Those words, it’s a kind of sickness. He isn’t angry at us, it’s something he isn’t in control of. I think he has Tourette’s.”
“Ugly fucking bitch,” he said to Laura. She cringed. Her heart was pounding, and she glanced at Edward.
“Laura, come help me,” Edward said, and she went into the kitchen with him. As soon as they were away from Tanya and Ricky, Edward’s eyes filled with tears. He poured ice cubes noisily into a glass pitcher and slammed the freezer door. To appear busy, of course. “Oh God,” he whispered, and his voice was shaking.
“What is going on?” Laura whispered back.
“She says she’s protected; her Jupiter or something. Yesterday she brought home that … put him in the guest room, gave him clothes … I don’t know how the doorman let her bring him upstairs. I was afraid he was going to rob us, kill somebody, but he seems … I can’t call the police; he hasn’t done anything. He didn’t force his way in here, she … I couldn’t go to the office and leave her here alone with him. She’s been chanting at him, laying on hands, and he puts up with it, but I think secretly he’s laughing at us, and I wouldn’t blame him. I told her last night when he finally went to sleep, send him to a doctor. If he really has Tourette’s and isn’t crazy, he should have treatment, maybe even medicine. Tanya doesn’t know anything about neurological disorders and neither do I. She’s always been so fey, so charming, so harmless, really …”
“How can you put up with it?” Laura asked, astounded. “The two of you are sitting here like some bizarre drawing room comedy, with your ‘eccentric’ visitor—you’re as bad as she is.”
“I never dreamed she would do anything like this,” Edward said. “And she believes, she truly believes, that she can help him.”
“And what do you really truly believe?”
“I didn’t sleep for a minute last night,” Edward said. “At the stockade with the guns, right? How do I protect my little family: do I commit her, divorce her? Tanya is my responsibility. What if, in some crazy way, she’s on the right track, a sort of new age saint?”
“Maybe you should commit yourself.”
“I’ve never heard you so cold,” Edward said sadly.
“I’ve never heard you so nutty.”
“What are you two doing in there?” Tanya called.
“Looking for the olives,” Edward called back. “We should go in,” he said.
Laura took a bottle of olives out of the kitchen cabinet. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know. Take her back to Europe, I guess. I may have to drag her.”
“And him?”
Edward gave her a trace of a smile. “He’s not coming.”
In the living room they drank martinis. Tanya looked blissful, Edward watchful, and Ricky, the strange young man, played with the fuzz on his sweater. Formerly Edward’s sweater, from Ralph Lauren. Edward didn’t own anything that wasn’t good. After two martinis Laura was drunk, and when, from time to time, Ricky let out a stream of obscenities, she no longer took it as a personal threat. He seemed more like a distasteful guest than a deranged street person bent on mayhem, but, on the other hand, guests had been known to outstay their welcome. She wondered if he would live with them.
Even if he just had that Tourette’s, whatever it was, he didn’t seem normal.
“Dinner!” Tanya announced cheerfully. They went into the dining room, and she brought out the food their cook had prepared before she went home. Laura wondered what the cook had made of all of this, and if she would ever come back. Ricky ate as if he were starved, with terrible table manners. “Ricky hasn’t had a decent meal in ages,” Tanya said, pressing more on him. Laura and Edward did not eat at all.
Laura wondered what would happen to Edward’s career. This staying away from the office, this jumping around to Paris to save his wife, was not good for his clients, his partners, or himself. She thought of Clay, and how he and Edward were exact opposites. She knew Clay, finally, after all these years. Clay would destroy those closest to him to get what he wanted. Edward would destroy himself to help the people he loved. For one moment, with the deepest longing, she wished it had been she and Edward so long ago, instead of Edward and Tanya, instead of herself and Clay. Perhaps then none of the sad things would have happened.
But there was no point in thinking about it. Chemistry was destiny.
21
1983—NEW YORK AND HOLLYWOOD
In the two years that had passed since Clay and Susan’s movie appeared on TV, the time they both had thought would be the beginning of many more happy and successful projects together, nothing had happened. At least not for him. He had various things in the works all the time, but they remained at Sun West. He had not been able to get a development deal for a movie or a pilot from any of the networks; no money was coming in. The partners at Sun West he had been so enthusiastic about were now an object of irritation to him, and he complained about them to Susan all the time. They were “shortsighted,” “cheap.” He and they could not agree on anything.
What he wanted them to agree on was his new obsession with Stalin’s life and power. He wanted to do Stalin as a miniseries. He read everything he could get on the dictator, and was fascinated by Stalin’s cruelty and evil. “Do you know,” Clay said to Susan, “that more Russians were murdered by Stalin than were killed in all of World War Two?”
“No, I didn’t know that.” But who would do this miniseries, as he envisioned it? The top shows that season were lush fantasy and escape, soap opera come to nighttime: Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Hotel, Knots Landing. For action shows, people wanted to watch handsome Magnum, tough Mr. T, the endearing Simon brothers—not Stalin! The time was not right for either history or a monster.
Clay kept on buying reference books, pored over them meticulously, underlining, and said everyone else was stupid. He lay in bed at night with yet another volume about Stalin balanced on his flat stomach, and Susan lay beside him feeling vaguely uncomfortable. This was not romantic bedtime reading. Clay always had a pen in his hand; there was ink on the sheets. She worried about his single-minded pursuit of something that seemed to have so little chance of success.
She inspected him, secretly, touched by melancholy. She knew about his anxiety attacks by now, and was as terrified by them as he was, always afraid he was going to die. He told her she was a young monkey, that she didn’t grow older but only more beautiful, and laughed when he mentioned his death. He said he wasn’t afraid, that he had lived. But she knew differently, for she had seen him sweaty, shaking, and pale under his tan. He was so dark from the sun, so Californian, that it emphasized their separations. She hated leaving him, afraid she would never see him again.
But leaving was what their lives were all about; parting and returning, the phone calls, the longing, the love. She was working on a new project now, a study of upper middle class battered wives, for another New York magazine cover story, to be called “Like You, Like Me.” People didn’t know yet that domestic violence sometimes existed under the most respectable surfaces. After considerable researc
h Susan had zeroed in on three different but representative women in the New York area, and had gained their trust enough so they were willing to tell her everything that had happened before they—the luckier ones—had escaped.
She had given them fake names—Esther, Bree, and Mary—but the stories were true. One had been married to a doctor, another a lawyer, another a respected businessman. Along with the physical abuse had been the emotional abuse, the belittling, the husbands’ horrendous power over these women who had once been as normal as anyone. Susan never stopped being amazed that these women could allow themselves to become so emotionally dependent on their husbands. They were not poor; they could have run away, but they didn’t until it was almost too late.
And yet, a part of her identified with the slow march toward total dependence. She knew she would never let Clay so much as put a hand on her, nor would he try. But while she was furious at what these women had allowed to be done to them, at the same time the story fascinated her. What was the fine line between connection and obsession, self and disappearance? She had written about this in her story of the two college kids, but now she was dealing with adult women like herself. Like You, Like Me. Like Laura? Like anyone?
She was spending a long weekend here with Clay in California, but she had to go home again in two days because she had a deadline. She sighed, and Clay noticed her and put down his book.
“Am I ignoring the monkey?”
“Yes.”
“But I love the monkey.”
He put his arms around her and they began to kiss. She stopped thinking about her work. This was the man she loved and always would, the man who never ceased to be aroused by her, who had made oral sex into a fine an and always asked her what she wanted, said she should tell him what she wanted … but during the last several years of their long relationship he had not been able to give her what she really wanted, whether or not she asked him to. Could you last a little longer? Don’t come before we even … At first she had made light of it to put him at his ease. She pretended he had been so aroused by their foreplay that he couldn’t wait. But they both knew what it really was—and because he couldn’t do anything about it they continued to make it into a sweet silly joke.